Rywin Affair - Contradictory Conclusions

Contradictory Conclusions

In the meantime, the protracted hearings of the Sejm's special committee continued. On April 5, 2004 the Sejm committee officially finished proceedings. With a majority vote supported by the SLD and Samoobrona deputies to the committee, it adopted without prior discussion a final report which came to the same conclusion as the penal court - according to which Rywin had been acting completely on his own.

However, the dissenting minority, including committee chairman Tomasz Nałęcz, refused to back the report and began to compile minority reports. The Sejm then had to decide whether to accept the committee's official final report or one of the various minority reports as the outcome of the investigation. On September 24, 2004, the Sejm unexpectedly voted to accept the minority report that most radically departed from the majority report and named the following persons as the masterminds behind Rywin's mission:

• prime minister Leszek Miller (stepped down in May 2004)
• Aleksandra Jakubowska, deputy minister of culture in Miller's government, who was also in charge of the amendment of the law that would possibly have benefited Agora S.A.
• Włodzimierz Czarzasty, another high-ranking SLD media policy-maker
• Robert Kwiatkowski, head of the Polish national public TV broadcaster TVP, the second channel of which was discussed to be privatized and a possible target for an Agora S.A. takeover
• Lech Nikolski, Miller's Chief of Cabinet, later in charge of the Polish EU membership referendum as minister without portfolio.